A Year in Language, Day 89: Lezgi
Lezgi is a Caucasian language spoken by the Lezgins, an ethnic group primaril located in norther Azerbaijan and the Russian Republic of Dagestan.
As is standard for Caucasian languages Lezgi has a huge consonant inventory; roughly 54 in total. Here’s how they reach that number. First Lezgi patterns primarily across five places of articulation (where in the mouth sounds are made); labial, dental, palatal, velar, and uvular. Next we increase that count by adding a contrasting labialized series (said with rounded lips, think the difference between “k” and “q”) to the dental, velar, and uvular consonants making for an effective 8 contrasting places of articulation. In addition to this all Lezgi stop consonants (consonants made with complete airflow obstruction e.x. /p/, /t/, or /k/) have four contrasting types of phonation: voiced (vocal chord vibrating), voiceless (vocal chords not vibrating), aspirated (chords not vibrating and with extra breathiness), or ejective (vocal chords shut, allowing pressure to build for “explosive” release).
Lezgin has no grammatical gender, but does have a robust case system, 18 in the literary form and at least twelve in the colloquial. As with most languages with large case systems most of these are used for motion or location (place-in, direction-towards, direction-from, etc.). The naming of cases cross-linguistically normally follows some standard Latin derived rules: for cases that imply a location one uses the root “essive”, from Latin for “to be” and stick appropriate prepositions. So the Lezgi case meaning below or under is the subessive, the one meaning on or over is superessive, etc. When motion is implied the root is instead “lative” from Latin for “carry”. So the case meaning meaning motion from something is the ablative (motion towards would be allative, or just lative). Overall Lezgin has more “essive” cases than “lative” cases, and many have metaphoric extensions to meaning, ex. the sublative (motion from under) can also mean “made out of”